1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a light distribution-controlling device of a vehicle headlight that switches light distribution of a headlight lamp body to any one of a low beam state and a high beam state.
Priority is claimed on Japanese Patent Application No. 2011-011941, filed Jan. 24, 2011, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of Related Art
As a vehicle headlight, a headlight including a light distribution-controlling device that automatically switches light distribution of a headlight lamp body according to the presence or absence of a preceding vehicle or an oncoming vehicle is known (For example, see Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. 2007-091023).
In the light distribution-controlling device disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. 2007-091023, a manual operation switch and an auto mode changeover switch are provided in a switch lever that is projected at a position close to a steering. In this device, when the auto mode changeover switch is turned on, a control unit automatically controls light distribution. In a vehicle, a camera for photographing a forward vehicle and a control unit are mounted, and signals output from the camera are input to the control unit. The control unit maintains light distribution of a headlight lamp body at a high beam state while a signal indicating the presence of the forward vehicle is not input from the camera, and when the signal indicating the presence of the forward vehicle is input from the camera, the control unit switches the light distribution of the headlight lamp body to a low beam state. In addition, at the time of auto mode control, when a light distribution-switching operation is performed by a driver, the control unit terminates the control by an auto mode and shifts to manual mode control.
However, in the light distribution-controlling device in the related art, when the manual operation is performed once at the time of auto mode control, the control by an auto mode is switched to the control by a manual mode thereafter completely. For this reason, in order to return to the control by an auto mode again, the auto mode changeover switch should be turned off once, and then turned on again. Therefore, in the case of the light distribution-controlling device in the related art, the operation when returning to the control by an auto mode is cumbersome, and an improvement in this respect is desired.